The tone of the poem is greed — an old elven hoard is taken by a dwarf, a dragon and a man. Each is consumed by the greed of owning the hoard until each in turn is killed and the next owner also becomes consumed by greed until he is killed in turn.

Tolkien mentions the poem in a letter to Pauline Baynes in 1961, commenting that: "I suppose one would also have to except 'The Hoard' from being 'light-hearted', though the woes of the successive (nameless) inheritors are seen merely as pictures in a tapestry of antiquity and do not deeply engage individual pity. I was most interested by your choice of this as your favourite."[3]